Digital ink is becoming an important media for users to interact with computer applications. For example, with a tablet personal computer, a user can use a pen to handwrite digital ink to input information.
While tablet PC and digital ink technologies thus make a user's utilization of computer much more natural, a user has to consider what type of information is going to be input at any given time, and then what program to use. For example, some programs are not digital ink aware, whereby digital ink cannot be input directly to that program. For such non-aware programs, a tablet PC input panel (TIP) may be used to convert handwriting to recognized text that is then input to the program as if it was typed on the keyboard.
However, at various times a user may want to input different kinds of information, such as characters (text), a shape, a sketch, a math equation, and so forth, but a tablet PC input panel can only provide text recognized from handwriting. Thus, the user needs to run a different and appropriate digital ink-aware program anytime a different type of digital ink is input, otherwise, for example, using the TIP will cause the system to attempt to convert the input to text.